In other words, I am for being out of the closet that surrounds bigotry, sexism, racism, religious persecution, zenophobia [sic], ageism, and sexuality. jim Hello Professor Jones: Mike Adams, here. I have a question. What do you call a bunch of people who pin a man down and refuse to let him up until he abandons his principles and adopts theirs? What do you call those who force their beliefs upon others without their consent and threaten to destroy them if they resist? Would this be enough of an infringement upon the dignitary interest of a human to warrant the label of intellectual rape? Think about it as you read the following words. After all, you wrote them. From: jones.2376@osu.edu
To: faculty@mansfield.ohio-state.edu
Dear colleagues, As you may have heard, last Thursday I had a deeply disturbing email exchange with Scott Savage, the Head of Reference and Library Instruction. I want to tell you about it and give the full transcript of what occurred so that you may determine for yourselves the nature and severity of the problem (it was entirely via email, so that transcript is attached as a MS Word document, with the emails between me and the library staff arranged in chronological order beginning at the top). To provide a brief background, these emails were exchanged among a group of faculty and staff charged with choosing a book for our first-year students to read as part of their introduction to college. With the approval of the Executive Committee, Donna Hight put together a small ad-hoc group of us to perform this task. We were all invited to suggest book titles for the group's consideration. On Wednesday 3/8, Scott sent some suggestions that included a book called The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian (the attached email transcript begins with an excerpt from that email of his, with the description he offered of this book; I excerpted that portion of his email, but no other email has been altered). When I investigated the book, it became clear that, while it appeared to be opposed to the spirit of OSU's diversity commitment, still more troubling was that its anti-gay argument rested on at least some claims (claims made in the publisher's description, quoted in the transcript) that do not meet basic standards of scholarly integrity. When I raised this objection with Scott, he proceeded to impugn both my credibility as well as that of the entire OSU-Mansfield faculty in determining the basic standards of scholarly integrity. He also sent copies of these email exchanges (again, which took place among an ad-hoc group under the auspices of the Executive Committee through Donna Hight) to a right-wing watchdog group (http://www.thefire.org/) not connected with OSU. These two things together suggest an intolerance for diversity that is enmeshed with deep-seeded disrespect for the university, its faculty, and for professional standards of scholarship--and this from the Head of Reference and Library Instruction. The fact that Scott continues to endorse a book that calls me and Jim and other gay and lesbian people "evil," and that he justifies this book on grounds that are ludicrous by scholarly standards, says to me this is about homophobia--that the hatred ("evil") and irrationality (anti-scholarly defense) this term implies are clearly operative here. This kind of defense would be unacceptable in support of a book that denied the Holocaust or that argued that African-Americans were inherently biologically inferior to other people. This is a matter of professional standards and competence, and it is also a matter of harassment--of creating a hostile work environment insofar as part of our jobs (mine and Jim's, but also all the faculty's) is to use the library for both research and teaching. Evie and Ted are investigating this matter with all appropriate gravity and diligence. I have consulted throughout the last few days with many of my senior colleagues among you. Those I consulted recognized, to a person, that this matter requires a serious response and that this issue affects us all. It was suggested by several of you that everyone should therefore be apprised as to the specifics of the exchange. Some of my senior colleagues intend to raise this issue in Monday's Faculty Assembly, and we are all interested in the entire faculty's therefore being sufficiently informed about the precise nature of the problem. That is the reason for this email. Thank you for your consideration of this matter. Sincerely,
Norman
…To Be Continued |